White sister

Chapter 11

By the time I was six, I had life pretty well figured out. I was sure nobody really cared about anything… especially me. Shuffled back and forth between group homes and foster families, I spent every other Saturday morning in some County Health facility, sitting for endless psych evaluations administered by bored civil servants. They usually turned up troubling results.

"He seems to have a dissociative personality, Mr. Jones."

Of course, he does. He has nobody to associate with.

"His lack of concentration indicates severe emotional distress, Mrs. Smith."

Of course, he lacks concentration. He's got nothing to care about.

Into the van, off to the group home, back to the dorm. Kick a ball on a dirt field behind the Huntington House for Boys. Watch an endless parade of fake smiles and furrowed brows, all of them telling me I was just another problem that had been laid off on society and would never be solved.

So you internalize. You get tough. You build calluses that will defend you from the darkness that has defined your life. When it starts so early, these dark spells can become who you are but the people who run the meat machine always know where the soft spots are. They know where to poke and prod. To stay alive, you get tougher. Hard skin and a hard mind-set. They become your calluses. But calluses only go an eighth of an inch down. To survive, you know you have to make yourself harder, so you do. You work to protect what's left of your soft center. But over time, these emotional calluses can get so thick they become who you are. When that happens, there is very little left to fight for.

That was me by the time I was ten. I had little I really cared about, nothing that interested me. When I joined the LAPD, it was after a stint in the Marines and it was just an easy next step. The police department, like the Corps, was a way to trick myself into believing that I knew who I was. The man in the green uniform is a Marine. The man in the blue uniform is a police officer. On the door of my black-and-white patrol car it said, "To protect and serve." That was my new identity, my new code. But it wasn't me.

When I looked in the mirror I saw a uniform. A man of authority. But I didn't feel like one. I was good at being a cop, mostly because I didn't care what happened to me. Go ahead, shoot me, you dirt-bag. There's nothing here but hard skin and a heartbeat anyway.

And then came Alexa and Chooch.

They flooded into my life, slowly softening my protective calluses like oil on dried leather. Little things, at first pensive moments where new personal thoughts seeped into me, filled hollow spots in my infected psyche. And these thoughts and feelings started slowly curing me like antibiotics pumped into a throbbing abscess.

The idea that people were actually important came next, along with the notion that there really was such a thing as an unselfish act. I began to realize that love was an actual condition, and not just something faked a manipulative ploy.

Little by little, I was pulled back from the darkness, reclaimed like a submerged, barnacle-encrusted hulk. It seemed like I would never fully come alive again, but I did.

The last four years had been a rebirth, with Alexa and Chooch performing emotional CPR. They taught me there was strength in vulnerability, and wisdom in restraint.

Driving back to Venice from Malibu, I tried to make sense of what was happening. Selfish as it seemed, I knew that losing Alexa would probably cost me more than I could deal with. I had Chooch, but he was an adult now, off at college. I couldn't live my life for him much longer. Without Alexa, I was afraid I would slip back into the same, murky, alcohol-infested swamp I had just managed to crawl out of.

I wasn't sure if Alexa was alive, wasn't sure why there was a dead cop in handcuffs in her car. I had absolutely no idea how Stacy and Lou Maluga figured in, but there was one common denominator in all this, and that was the late Sgt. David Slade. I knew that Rafie and Tommy had no choice but to hang me out with the dicks in the Professional Standards Bureau. Their careers were at stake if they tried to give me cover. I wasn't going to back off and by now they knew it.

The problem was that nothing was anything without Alexa. I love her with a power so pure it sometimes frightens me. Without her, my life has no meaning.

I had been in some life-threatening situations, but I had never been in such jeopardy before.

I got home to Venice and parked in the drive. When I opened the front door, I realized that I had left without turning the alarm on. Like David Slade, deep down I knew I was tougher than anybody dumb enough to come after me. All the lights were still on, just as I'd left them. It was past one A. M. but I knew instantly the house was empty. It had that empty house feel, like a murder scene where everyone was dead.

I walked into the den and checked the answering machine. It was an old machine and the remote access system had become temperamental, so I couldn't retrieve calls. But it didn't matter because there were only the same three messages I'd left for Alexa earlier. I sat in the half dark, thinking about what my next move would be. I probably shouldn't stay here because if Rafie and Tommy followed through and filed a 181 complaint on me, by morning the Professional Standards Bureau could go to the D. A. and get an arrest warrant for obstructing justice. I could be picked up, booked, and taken to the courthouse for arraignment. It would take me half a day to get through all that. I didn't have half a day.

I figured I'd better clear out and come back here only to shower or change. They would try to serve the damn warrant two or three times, but they wouldn't make a career of it. After a couple of tries, it would go on the computer along with a BOLO to pick me up. I'd broken some internal department policies, some search and seizure regs, and a criminal obstruction of justice statute, but it was all Class-C stuff. I hadn't shot anyone yet.

I stood and moved slowly out of the den. I was halfway across the partially darkened living room when I saw something move in the backyard.

I froze in my tracks and looked out. It was hard to see too much of the backyard through the room reflection on the glass, but someone was definitely sitting in one of the metal chairs back there, looking at the canal.

Had Luna Maluga already sent some energy in my direction, or was it Alexa? Taking no chances, I pulled my gun, moved to the side of the room, and edged to the glass slider. It was locked. I silently unhooked the latch and using my foot, slowly slid it open. I knelt down to nonfatal shooting height and looked outside.

There was someone stretched out on the lawn chair. It looked like Chooch. He had ignored my instructions and come home. In that instant, I was glad he had. He'd been right, I needed someone to talk this over with.

"Chooch!" I stepped outside and crossed toward him.

A man screamed in terror and jumped up, dreads and skinny elbows flying. Then John Bodine stumbled and went down, managing to catch himself with his good wrist, balancing himself precariously. "Like to scare a motherfucker to death," he whined.

I put my gun away. "What are you doing here?"

"Got no place else," he said. "And you still got all my what-alls in the car. 'Sides alia that, I got…"

"I know. Payback coming."

"Finally got that right, half-stepper."